I Am Interested In Ww1 and Ww2

@akindheart

Combat soldiers experience things that no human being should have to endure, as do many civilians in war zones.
I hope your dad had an otherwise happy life.

@akindheart Yes, shell shock is a terrible thing. By Bataan I guess your dad was a Marine.
Bad things happened in the Philippines. I have read a couple books about it.
One was on the Bataan death march and what happened to the POW's

My dad lost part of his hearing from the artillery blasts. His neurologist also thought
that the concussions from the blasts accentuated his dementia later in life.
His best friend during the war was never the same, they called it battle fatigue back then.
Dad said he was a completely different person after the war.
My dad was fine during his waking hours, but he had nightmares off and on, even when
he was in hospice.

@DogMan omg..we have to talk. my dad was in the army. he was a heavy cannoneer. i am not sure it affected his hearing but i am sure it did. my dad called it shell shock and i think that was listed in his discharge papers. they sent him home. my dad died really young. 47. he was a Bataan avenger. he went in AFTER the death march. but yes, horrible horrible circumstances

In the first world war so many soldiers were shot as cowards but later it was diagnosed as Shell shock... My great great uncle John is buried somewhere along the Burma railway of WW2.... @akindheart

@braveheart21 war is not fair and it is brutal. so many innocent people hurt. My dad would not even tell me what war he was in. we had to research his war medals and get his discharge papers to understand his terror

@akindheart no war is fair.... Modern war is even worse because you don't even need to see the enemy... Program the weapon.. Release it and job done...

@akindheart I flew for a while with a navigator whose dad had died on the Bataan death march. As a young adult he had met survivors, looking for those who may have known his dad and his dad's experience and of course they were more open with him. Truly a hell on earth experience where victims were executed on a whim.

You are so right. Our soldiers, sailors and Marines came home after the war and little or nothing about their experience. Like they just came home, changed into civilian clothes and went back to their old jobs. Many had to first spend time at a VA hospital to get their minds back to neutral. One cousin went into occasional panic seizures and in fear of never getting out of the hospital learned to hide his episodes. Another cousin would occasionally start to talk about it but would tear up and go silent.

As a young Air Force pilot in the mid 60s, I got to fly with quite a few WW2 vets before they retired. Many who had left the military after the war and got recalled with the ups and downs of the cold war. Reserve officers are on the hook for recall for practically the rest of their lives. Their stories were horrible. An event would occasionally trigger their willingness to talk about their war experience.

@Heartlander That is what happened to my dad. He went into a mental facility to get squared away. he filed for disability and they turned him down. you probably know thatthere was a fire that destroyed a lot of the military records in St. Louis. we were so fortunate to get my dad's. they made us sign a waiver that we would not be upset by what we read. It was very sad what he went through and he was the follow up crew called the Bataan Avengers

@akindheart I can only imagine the complexity of record keeping.

What was the growth in our military over just 3 or 4 years? From 500 thousand to like 13 million. Add that to the explosive growth of the military-industrial complex and the millions working there. There were so many components, so many fronts; all built from practically scratch in just a few years. And no computers. Just hand written forms and mechanical typewriters to keep records of all that.

We can only imagine what your dad went through. My dad was 4F due to debilitating bone infection in his thigh that took years to heal. In his late 80s he lived at a retirement home a d enjoyed the company of his table mate who had served. I loved visiting. Both he and my dad were very cognitive with stories on top of stories of their life experiences. The table mate, Clement, walked from Normandy to Berlin, and summed it up best: we saw things we can never forget.

@akindheart I was lucky enough to have coerced some stories out of my dad, after I
went into the military. I also received two scraps books after he passed away. His
mom saved every letter he wrote to her, and every newspaper story about him.
It also included his military training records and discharge papers. He told my mom
not to tell me about the scrap books until after he was gone. He knew I would go
gaga over them. I read through all of them, and then went back and took notes.
I then read books about his unit, and put everything in a story. It's still a work in
progress, but I have shared it with people around the world. Valerio Caulderoni
wrote the book, Mt Battaglia 1944. My dad fought there and was wounded.
Val said if he had had my story, before he wrote the book, dad would have
been a main character. I sent some of dads letter to him, and they are now
in the WWII museum in Florence.

He in turn sent me some 30.06 shell casings from the battle field.
In a one week battle, the 350th regiment fired over 1 million rifle rounds,
and threw over 6,000 grenades and thousands of mortar rounds.

Sorry, I could go on and on. If you are interested in reading it, let me know.

@Heartlander Did you get to fly the Phantoms? I was a crew chief on old 1966 F-4D models
that had gone through the war. Many had bent airframes, from being over G'd so many
times. The pilots had to give them constant stick just to keep them flying straight.
We transferred them to the Guard in 1979, when we got the new F-16's at Nellis AFB. Then I
re-up'd, I got sent to Holloman to work on the even better F-15's ☺️

@akindheart so, your dad was probably in the 38th infantry division 151st Regiment.

I'll bet he landed at Luzon to take on the Japanese, before going to the Philippines.

Luzon was horrible. 😞

@DogMan OMG!!! he was. How did you find that out??? and yes he was in Luzon! amazing.

@DogMan No. I was glued to C-130s from the moment I completed UPT through 5 years active an 5 years reserve. My active time was mostly in Europe and South America. While in the reserves I was activated to serve as a VN flight instructor at TSN. The US had given the South Vietnamese 32 C130s, and threw me in as part of the package. We were a tiny detachment attached to MACV and pretty much free to follow our own instincts on how to get South Vietnam crews transitioned and operating on their own. The airplanes were reflagged as VNAF with maintenance provided by LTV contract persons, mostly US ex-pats. I got to witness the cease fire drama up close and got to witness the war from both the US and the VNAF side. I was a reservist on temporary active duty, so on return to the states I immediately became a civilian again.

@Heartlander It sounds like they "Literally" glued you to the Hercules ☺️
When they threw you in with the package.

Did you guys also transport people out of SE Asia in 1975 ?

I never flew on the 130's, we were always on the 141's when we went TDY. I have watched
the 130's with the rockets on them, taking off at night. What a spectacular sight.

JATO I think it was called?

@DogMan No, I was out earlier ... in 1973. Even then it was but a handful of Americans left. Everything was rapidly being turned over to the Vietnamese. My program was part of what they called "Enhance Plus" where C130s, lots of A37s, F5s, and a lot more was quickly turned over to the South Vietnamese in 1972. Maybe too fast considering that it was one of those A37s that bombed the Presidential Palace at the fall of Saigon in 1975 and was piloted by a Vietcong pilot who was trained by the USA.

Yes, the C130 had a run and may eventually exceed that of the B52 and C47. The earlier tail numbers were like 53-xxx and they are still building them today, so 70 years now and there is no sign of slowing down.

I never did a JATO. As what I understood, they added minimum extra performance on takeoff and were mostly used for impressive night takeoffs :) for the benefit of the media.

@Heartlander Very interesting...I didn't know they were still building 130's Are they mostly
cargo types, or gun ships? or both? I heard that the B-52 would be in service until 2050, giving
it a 100 year life span.

@DogMan Gunships are too unique to be anything else. Extensive modifications all around that can't be either done or undone without a complete overhaul. Most of everything else makes the adaptability one of it's values, like switching from cargo hauling to passengers to airdrop delivery from one flight to the next.

I believe they are up to a "J" and a "Super J" now. And over more recent years have changed engines and propellers. The latest is an 8 blade propeller. I just checked, and it looks like Lockheed has been developing a sea-plane version. This kind of fits into its fundamental strength of being able to land and take off in/from primitive airstrips. Like any river, lake or ocean could be like an airport?

@Heartlander Nice! thanks for the info. I have tried to keep up with the new planes.

I live in Las Vegas Nevada, Nellis AFB was my first base, so I came back here to
work after I got out. I was in from 77 - 85. I purposely bought a house north
of town that is directly in the flight path between Nellis and the world famous
range north of town. I get to see and hear them all when they fly over.
This week we had B-1's and B-2's doing exercises. We usually do not get a
lot of SAC planes here. Nellis is a very busy base, I saw just about every
aircraft at one time or another. Including British, and French planes.
I was lucky enough to go to a Capstone Firepower demonstration
a few years ago. That was an experience.

@DogMan it's been 40+ years since I left the reserves. Lots have probably changed over those years. There are some things that probably haven't changed and probably wont. On that list is the viability of bases like Nellis. There will always be a Nellis, an Eglin, an Andrews, and maybe just 3 or 4 other bases. Every place else may vanish at the stroke of a new budget. They wouldn't dare close Nellis.